Singaporean in court over execution Facebook post

A Singapore court charged a man with inciting violence after his Facebook page showed an ex-minister's face inserted into a famous Vietnam War execution photograph, his lawyer said Thursday.

Gary Yue, 36, appeared in a district court Wednesday and faces up to 10 years in jail and a fine if convicted of two charges relating to Internet posts, his lawyer S. Balamurugan told AFP.

He is accused of superimposing in 2010 a picture of the former interior minister and deputy premier, Wong Kan Seng, onto the 1968 photo of the South Vietnam police chief shooting a communist guerrilla in the head at point-blank range.

The charge sheet, sent to AFP by Yue's lawyer from firm Straits Law Practice, says the altered photo made it appear that the police chief was "executing" Wong.

The original Pulitzer Prize-winning photo was taken by US photographer Eddie Adams, and Yue made the doctored version his profile picture on Facebook.

Yue said in court he was influenced by public unhappiness over the escape of a terror suspect from a high-security detention facility in February 2008, according to the Straits Times newspaper.

As interior minister at the time, Wong was blamed by the public for the security lapse.

Yue, an engineer at a weapons manufacturer, apologised in court and said that his actions were a "stupid mistake", the Straits Times reported.

"I just wanted to express some of my frustration by posting some comments," the paper quoted him as saying.

"I had no intention whatsoever in my mind to cause any harm."

Yue, who is free on bail, was also charged over a post on the Facebook page of dissident website Temasek Review, where he put up a link to a video clip of the 1981 assassination of Egyptian president Anwar Sadat.

Below the link, he wrote that "we should re-enact a live version of this" during Singapore's National Day Parade held every August 9, according to a separate charge sheet.